They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Julia Knight's "Warlords and Wastrels"

Julia Knight is married with two children, and lives with the world’s daftest dog that is shamelessly ruled by the writer’s obligatory three cats. She lives in Sussex, UK and when not writing she likes motorbikes, watching wrestling or rugby, killing pixels in MMOs. She is incapable of being serious for more than five minutes in a row.

Here Knight dreamcasts an adaptation of Warlords and Wastrels, the concluding volume of the Duelists trilogy:

I think the most important way to decide this would be – would they look right in the right sort of clothing (think Musketeers) and can they pull off the swagger? I didn’t really have any actors in mind when I was writing, but one or two did spring to mind later, especially when I saw the covers. Kacha there has a hint of Ronda Rousey about her, and she would fit perfectly with how I imagined her. Aaron Taylor-Johnson could pull off Vocho’s ego and panache I’m sure (and he wears a little Musketeer beard very well!) For their long-suffering servant, Cospel, Nick Frost would be excellent.

Santiago Cabrera would do very well for the rather intense Petri, and for the mysterious Dom? Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. At least I know they can act fencing!

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin